(a/n: what can i say, i have weird ships.
i actually started writing this last year... and only finished it now. oh well.)
Pledge
by L.C. Li
Though no one knows how he was birthed
Or why his face be stained with mirth
Emerged from whispers, hero Braum
Renowned for wisdom, heart, and brawn
He bears a shield, broad and fair
Whilst keeping goats within his care
Even when he is gone in snow
If you need help, good Braum will know.
- Ancient Northern Ballads, p. 43
::-::
He is a plain man, a goat herder, and goat herders are not usually granted sanction to the beautiful, deadly citadel of the Frozen Watchers. Avarosa considers herself a good judge of character, but as she examines his broad, muscled back, his trimmed mustache, and the unreadable glint in his eyes, she is not certain what to make of him. He appears to be kind and jovial, but his sheer strength leaves her apprehensive.
"This is your choice?" she says to her First Adviser.
She curtsies in response. "He is the strongest candidate."
Avarosa languidly circles the man, the rhythmic clack of her heeled boots reverberating in hollow staccato. She examines the broad door in his grasp—a mammoth of a shield with the likeness of a ram. Its eyes appear to glow with an otherworldly power. He is powerful. Mysterious. A deadly combination.
"Name?" she prompts.
He bows his head slightly. "Braum."
The adviser raises her eyebrow at Avarosa, who only smiles in response. She already knew his name. That wasn't the point of the question. Attitude. Attitude is everything. From his response, she can tell that he is respectful to superiors, direct, and humble. All good traits.
"Braum," she tries. It is a solid name. Quite appropriate, given his appearance. "What is your motive for this position?"
He smiles warmly, his mustache curling upward as if to emulate his conviviality. "Good lady, you know Freljordian stallion?"
His voice seems to rumble through the floor and straight to her bones. She feels a flicker of warmth spring beneath her chest—something that makes her wish to impress him. "Freljordian stallions are wild, untamed creatures. No one knows much about them, except that they travel in small, elite herds and elect a leader, who they protect with their lives."
Braum nods. "Without leader," he says, "herd will fall."
She meets his piercing gaze, her stomach leaping to her throat. How? How could he know about her plot against the Frozen Watchers?
She whips to her adviser. "What did you tell him," she says coldly.
The adviser seems just as aghast as Avarosa. "Nothing beyond what you instructed," she says.
Avarosa turns back to Braum. She wants to keep her misgivings of him—how he can easily kill her with one simple strike, how he knows far more than he should, how he keeps her on an edge—but if he is truly her enemy, she knows that she would already be dead. There is technically the chance that he is a spy… but somehow, she can't bring herself to doubt the honest gleam in his eye.
"Well," she says to her adviser, "it seems your recommendations remain as strong as ever."
The adviser curtsies again and gestures frantically to Braum, who kneels before Avarosa, his shield hoisted at his side.
"I, Avarosa, accept you, Braum, as my Sentinel," Avarosa says. "Do you pledge to preserve your charge to the utmost of your ability, no matter the circumstances?"
"So I pledge," Braum says.
"And do you pledge eternal allegiance to your charge?"
"So I pledge."
"Rise, appointed Sentinel." Avarosa unslings her bow, tapping it gently against his broad shoulders. "May your eyes be sharper than those of a hawk."
"May you have security," Braum says.
His deep, resonant voice combined with his lips against the back of her hand sends an electric tingle straight to her heart. It's an unusual feeling; she ignores it.
Perhaps she shouldn't have.
::-::
Falling ice and drifting snow
Broken door and bright blue glow
Come and go, come and go
Big, big brother Braum
- Freljordian Nursery Rhymes, p. 8
::-::
It's within an hour of the moon's pinnacle and Braum is stationed just outside his charge's room on the iced balcony, his eyes no less alert than they were at midday. The frozen city is deadly silent at this time of night, frosted snow fluttering aimlessly through the still streets—but instead of relaxing, Braum is most attentative.
A flickering shadow dances across the edge of his periphery and he quietly readies his shield. Ah. So they have come.
A grappling hook whispers through the air, wrapping expertly around the balcony railing. Braum peers over the edge and rests his head on his muscled forearms as a cloaked figure attempts to sidle up the cable. When the stranger looks upward and freezes in fear, Braum gives a casual wave.
"You need help?" he says jovially.
"Uh," the stranger says.
"You leave," Braum says, "and you keep neck."
After a brief pause, the stranger fluidly draws a throwing knife from his waist. Before he can make another move, Braum swiftly brings up his shield and slices the grappling cable with one of its horns. He watches remorsefully as the stranger plummets to the ground, his body lurching into peculiar angles as he plummets to the frozen pavement.
"I warned you," Braum says solemnly, bowing his head in respect at the departed soul.
A slight creak behind his ear catches his attention. He immediately whips around, his shield raised—only to come face-to-face with Avarosa.
She is wrapped in her high-collared nightgown, the moonlight bending gently over her heart-shaped face as if acknowledging her royal air, the thick, heavy fabric of her embroidered coverlet draped over her shoulders and gently hugging her curves. Her silver hair, ordinarily tied up in an elegant, pristine updo, is loose and spilling over her shoulders to her waist in a river of silken strands. Braum shifts his eyes to the moon with effort.
"What made you think of the balcony?" Avarosa says.
Her melodic voice is soft and still, almost whisked away by the muted breeze. Braum glances at her questioningly.
"You've always guarded the hallway," Avarosa says. "But tonight you chose the balcony."
"Sleep, good lady," is all Braum says. "Braum is here."
She evaluates him with lucid cerulean eyes, an unsatisfied tilt to her lips. "You are Iceborn, I presume. What did the Watchers gift you?"
A flicker catches Braum's attention and he immediately darts in front of Avarosa, throwing up his shield. The solid thunk of an arrow confirms his instincts.
"Good lady," he says urgently, "go inside."
Avarosa stares at the arrow embedded in his shield for a long moment. Then, she stretches out her hand. To Braum's amazement, the air crystallizes around her fingers, forming into a single razor-sharp arrow.
"Who's coming?" she asks coolly.
"Not Watcher's people," Braum says. "Man down there, he has strange clothes."
Another arrow whistles through the air. Braum easily catches it on his shield.
"Please, good lady," he says. "Is better for you to live."
Avarosa's eyes dart across his face. Although her lips press together, she gives a short nod and darts back into her bedchamber. Braum turns back to the balcony, listening closely.
A rapid patter of soft shoes against iced tile directs his attention to the roof. As a shadow leaps over the hanging lip of the parapet, Braum rips one of the arrows from his shield and flings it with deadly aim to its middle. The shadow bends into an inhuman shape, misting around the arrow, and lands with catlike grace on the balcony.
A shapeshifter. He'd never met one before.
"Frozen Watchers favor you?" Braum says cheerfully. "That is good gift."
The shadow draws itself upward. "My quarrel is not with you, big man. Move aside."
"First tell me why you help these foreigners," Braum says. "Avarosa is good princess. Killing do nothing."
He catches a slight gleam of teeth beneath the shadow's embroidered hood. "Good princess?" the shadow scoffs. "Tell that to our sisters, who are kidnapped and violated by the Watchers. Tell that to our brothers, whose backs are bent with daily labor. Tell that to our starving families. Your 'good princesses' brought these blights into this land! We will not see it go unpunished!"
The shadow darts forward, a crudely modified ice pick in his hand. Braum easily whacks his shield over his head. He crumples face-first to the ground, his weapon skittering across the balcony.
"Well, I see why my advisor considered a Sentinel so important."
Avarosa emerges from her chambers and kneels down to examine the ice pick, turning it over in her fingers. Braum peers around, but the night is still.
"Threat passed, good lady," he says. "Sleep well."
Avarosa stands, slipping the pick inside her cloak. "Already? I thought there would be more."
"No. They see me. They leave. Will come back with bigger plan."
"How ironic." Avarosa's eyes drift over the unconscious Freljordian man on the balcony. "We are fighting the same enemy."
She says this slowly and deliberately. He smiles at the measure of trust she has placed in him.
"Frozen Watchers?" he guesses.
She smiles faintly. "Take the man inside," she says. "I have some questions I need to ask."
::-::
His face is kind and broadly set
His smile never rare
He jumps to any good man's aid
He listens and he cares
No fault has he, that hero Braum,
Except for only one
For selfless men can never see
Asceticism's wrongs.
- Avarosan Folklore, p. 102
::-::
Time comes and goes.
Braum sees the burden bearing down on Avarosa's shoulders as she speaks with several Iceborn in secret, stays through late nights scouring old papers beneath frostlight, slips into the shadows of the city under clever guise to witness the sufferings of the people with her own eyes.
Day after day, he comes upon her in the library, fast asleep in the wee hours of the morning over piles of sketches and blueprints and strategic templates. And then he realizes that war is coming. A true revolution that will shake the very heart of Freljord.
Surely, he was sent for such a time as this.
But he doesn't pressure Avarosa into confiding in him; he waits for her, as he has grown accustomed to doing, whether waiting for her to rise or waiting for her to sleep, waiting for her to enter or waiting for her to leave. He waits for her... perhaps more than is wise.
As days come and go with the rise and fall of Freljord moonlight, he begins to notice. He notices the way her eyes sparkle when she laughs, or the graceful curve of her lips at the corners, or how one particular strand of hair in her royal updo can never be wholly tamed. He waves it away as infatuation, continues his stoic watch—but it only grows, a double-edged blossom in his chest, thrilling, agonizing. The fire in her voice, the passion from fingertip to fingertip, the dust of weary determination across her face—it captivates him, holds him fast. And all the while, she is blissfully unaware.
Well; so he thought.
It is sunrise when she summons him to the secret chamber beneath the floor, eyes bleary from another sleepless night. Yet the fire in her cheeks is unabated as she spreads a long roll of parchment, scribbled with marks and letters and numbers which she eagerly describes in rapid fire.
"We can catch them off guard if we meet them at the bridge," she details enthusiastically. "It is our only chance of matching them."
Braum examines the map. It only takes him one minute to find something that concerns him. "You are at frontlines," he says, gesturing to the crest placed at the very fore of the troops.
"Of course," Avarosa says. "I must lead the charge."
"Is strange. You are archer," Braum says.
"I am also the leader. What courage would the troops hold if I cower in the back?"
He feels the surge of another unknown emotion—something fiery, black, mildewing in his stomach like sour stew. "What courage would troops hold if you die?" he protests, his voice raising ever so slightly.
Avarosa blinks, as if she'd never even considered the thought. "I will not die," she says evenly.
"No man thinks he die," Braum says. "Is carelessness."
She shakes her head, placing a soft, slender hand on the back of his. It's an unusually brazen touch that sends a spark through his veins. "I will not die," she says firmly, "because you are my Sentinel."
Braum falters at her confidence. Yes; he was granted strength by the Frozen Watchers at his birth. Yes; he had an impenetrable shield. Yes; if anyone could protect Avarosa, he could. That did not mean that he was invincible—neither him, nor Avarosa.
"You not know for sure," he says laboriously, pulling his hand away before he loses the will.
But she seizes it again. "I know," she says, "as deeply as I know that the sun will rise and fall."
She smiles at him—a shining, hopeful thing that is a beacon in the darkness. And Braum cannot deny her at that.
He is not sure he can deny her at anything.
::-::
A hero's most difficult fight
Is from his heart than from his hands.
- Proverbs from Ancient Freljord, p.945
::-::
The long, hollow stretch of the abyss is crudely piled with bodies of Iceborn; the howling wind slices through fur and skin and bone. Avarosa wraps her cloak around herself, the flush of victory alight in her eyes as she extends her bow.
"My brethen!" she calls. "A great battle has been won this day! For it was not the Watchers with whom we were doing battle, but oppression and maltreatment. Many lives were lost for the sake of liberty; let us honor them with a moment of silence."
Braum bows his head like the multitude of Iceborn around him, his eyes wandering to the broad gate at the end of the bridge. They had won. Avarosa had seen to the end of the Frozen Watchers, and he had protected her adequately. The next era would be spent rebuilding, remaking, redoing—an era for which he would not be needed.
His time with Avarosa was finished.
As Iceborn transport their wounded and bury their dead, he approaches Avarosa, his heart aching at seeing her beautiful face. Upon seeing him, she smiles and her posture straightens, as if energy has been injected directly into her spine.
"Braum," she says. "It was a long and arduous battle, but we are free!"
He tries a smile. "Yes. Many brave ones have fallen."
She nods solemnly. "We shall mourn them appropriately when the time comes. But their spirits would wish for us to celebrate at our victory, for we are all winners."
The passion in her eyes makes him waver, but he forces the words out of his mouth.
"Good lady, I must go."
Avarosa's face immediately falls into a blank, emotionless slate. "Pardon?"
He curls his fingers against his shield, fighting to keep his ordinary smile on his face. "Braum has done his duty."
Her eyebrows furrow in innocent confusion. "You've done more than that, Braum, but—but why do you need to leave?"
"Good lady, I tarry longer, I cause pain."
"You would never cause pain," she says earnestly. "You have done nothing but support me. Us."
The hopeful expression on her face sends a pang through him. How can he explain that he is causing pain not to others… but to himself?
"Good lady has fulfilled her dream," he says. "No more need for Braum."
"I do need—" She breaks off abruptly, and he finds himself wondering what she was about to say. "Stay. Please, Braum."
His heart throbs painfully. "Is that an order?"
She lowers her face until her expression is masked by the shadows of her ebony hood. "…No. I would never."
"I can not stay." He cannot watch her join a political marriage. He cannot watch another man love her. He cannot be so close to the object of his desire when she is unattainable. It is selfish and it is not like Braum, but men do not act like themselves when in the vices of love.
"You're—you're certain?" Avarosa whispers, her melodic voice breaking ever so slightly.
He smiles, but it's empty. "I am goat herder. You are queen." They are brazen words that hint there is something more between them, something besides a simple Sentinel caring for his charge—but he can't find the will to take them back.
Something flares in Avarosa's eyes and she touches his arm, sending a sharp jolt that clouds his mind. "I fought for freedom," she says fiercely. "Freedom that will allow me to marry whoever I wish."
His heart stops. "What?"
"You must know my affections for you." She grips his hand. "Surely by now."
His defenses are crashing down around his ears and it is taking every ounce of self-control to build them back up, to refrain from pulling her to him and kissing those sculpted lips, to remind himself why he can't, he can't, he can't. "Please, good lady," is all he manages in a husky voice.
"You—you feel similarly, don't you?" Her eyes fix on his, piercing his soul.
He grips his shield with both hands until his knuckles turn white. "Freljordian alpha must protect herd, good lady," he says.
"We would," Avarosa says, almost pleadingly. "We would protect everyone better than I could alone."
Braum forces himself to shake his head. "Your new kingdom is weak from war. Many tribes are hungry. They engulf you. You need alliance."
"I can find some other way. Some way besides marriage."
Hope spreads its blossoming petals in Braum's chest, but he quickly crushes it. He clenches his shield tighter, as if it will patch his fraying self-restraint. "You know more than Braum. Is it possible?"
Her eyes flash and her mouth opens heatedly, but she stops short and turns her head to avoid his gaze.
"I... don't know."
Braum fights to keep his plummeting disappointment from showing on his face. "You do know," he says gently. "It is just not answer you want."
He turns, but Avarosa's clear voice snares him. "Braum."
He glances back. "Yes, good lady," he says softly.
She steps forward, her eyes so hollow that he feels a punch in his gut. "Are you... fond of me?"
He stoops to one knee and gently takes her hand, relishing how warm her flesh feels in the midst of the biting wind. He cannot bring himself to look her in the eye and instead fixes his gaze on her snow-frosted boots.
I love you more than you could know. I wish to protect you forever. Your courage and your strength, your passion and your gentility, it is beyond what I could ever have imagined. I came to save Freljord from oppression of Frozen Watchers, and I found woman unparalleled in both wisdom and beauty.
"Yes," he says simply.
He kisses her hand, chastely. The most he will allow himself. If he does anything further, he is not certain he can muster the strength to leave.
"May you have security," he says, and with one final salute, turns and marches away.
He does not dare to look back.
::-::
Defended by that ancient door,
No charge of Braum's has seen death
Drawn their last breath
Vanished to the depths
Of that voidless moor
Where all that lives is done quite for
- Freljordian Yarns, p. 85
::-::
He is back on his mountain, watching his goats and his sheep, perched on the enchanted door that is his steadfast shield, and he can almost convince himself that life is back to normal and he never knew a remarkable woman named Avarosa.
That is until his mother, despite her ailing age and having one foot through death's door, emerges from their cottage and promptly whacks the back of Braum's head, commanding him to tell her why he was acting like a sullen newborn.
And because the tale is weighing on his shoulders until he is dragging his feet, because his chest aches as if he was buried beneath a mountain, because he is in pain, more so than being struck with arrows and swords and fists, Braum tells her everything. He speaks of the injustice of the Frozen Watchers; he speaks of the brutal, horrific civil war at the Howling Abyss; and, after stammering through his syllables and stumbling over his words, he speaks of Avarosa. It has been months, he knows, but the anguish is fresh as ever. Even Braum, the strongest man of all, cannot remain smiling.
But when his tale is done, he only receives another blow on the head.
"You are goatbrain!" his mother scolds. "You do not leave woman you love!"
"What else could I do?" Braum fires back. "Die inside? Cause trouble?"
"Pah, political marriage is goatbrain thing," his mother says dismissively. "Is much better to take tribes by force."
He shakes his head and lowers his chin on his shield. "Is not how capital works," he mumbles. "Avarosa wishes to unite all tribes. But war is too heavy."
His mother evaluates him for a lengthy moment. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, yet firmer. "Braum. Your woman, she happy?"
He smiles ruefully. "I would not know."
"But you think her your woman."
He freezes. His mother smiles.
"I do not say be goatbrain. I do not say be stubborn. But you leave, you only cause pain. This woman, she love you, and you love this woman. Then stay with her. Stay, and find way. There always be a way." She glances yearningly at the gravestone just outside their home. "There always was."
Braum is silent. His mother places a comforting hand on his arm.
"Think about it, yes?" she says.
"Yes," he says at last.
She smiles. "That is my goatbrain. Sleep soon."
"Yes," he says.
But Braum is a deliberate thinker. He considers every opportunity, every consequence, every possibility, and it is far too difficult to change his mind when he had already made it. So he continues to herd his goats and aid the outlying villages of Freljord and push away the ache in his heart.
But then the news comes.
He hears the mourning bells rolling in the village below his mountain; when he draws near, he hears a single cry that breaks his world.
"The Queen is dead! The Queen is dead!"
He immediately storms into the village, unthinking. He is barely able to keep his voice under control as he speaks to the villagers, frantically hoping that the news is false.
But it is not. Avarosa is dead, murdered by strangers who bypassed all security... as if someone knew every measure.
He does not know who killed her. He does not know why she was unprotected, why she did not enlist another Sentinel, why, why—but he feels a burden of guilt, weighty as a boulder, crashing down on his shoulders.
If only he had stayed. If only he had watched over her. If only he hadn't been selfish.
His fault. All of it... his fault.
::-::
There lived a man in mountains cold
Who fought with shield over sword
He kept his goats and sheep by day
He carried weight without a dray
The legend, unmatched hero, Braum
The best warden from dusk 'till dawn
- The Ballad of Braum, pg. 1
::-::
Many years pass; years that Braum does not count. They blur by to his immortal life, laughing raucously in his face: you live when you deserve to die, and Avarosa dies when she deserves to live.
He retreats into hiding, watching the world with passive eyes as his mother wordlessly slips into the afterlife. He abides as history turns to legend; legend, to myth. He, a man who was an Iceborn and an Iceborn who was a man, is spun into a perfect hero—strong, brave, courageous, wise. No faults. No problems. No mistakes.
But when there are cries for help, he does not come. When there are pleas for unity, he stays in the shadows. Ashamed. Frozen.
And then comes the hawk.
It is an unusual sight in a sea of white and grey: twin tawny bladed wings that slice through the whistling blizzard, billowing to a halt right before his door. He hurriedly opens his cottage, but the hawk refuses to step inside; it only stares at him, piercingly.
"Enter, good messenger," he says. "No harm befall you here."
But the hawk continues to stand in the bitter wind, still as stone. Hesitantly, he steps out of his residence, reaching toward it—but it flutters away. He takes another step. It flutters again.
"You lead me some place?" he inquires.
The hawk curiously tilts its head, then takes to the air.
He sighs, expecting it to soar away. Instead, it circles around him, then hovers to the mountain pathway—a road he had not trod in many, many years.
He follows it.
It guides him around the village at the mountain's base; through a crevice; across a hillock; and finally, to an outcrop of trees settled around a lake. He sees a cluster of animal-skin tents, in which loiter strangely-dressed women and men.
A tribe. A large tribe.
At their center stands a slender woman, silver hair pouring around her shoulders, pale fingers extended to the sky. The hawk departs from Braum's side and soars through the clearing, perching on her finger.
Braum's heart stops.
It could not be.
The hawk seems to lean to the woman's ear; she turns, eyes searching in his direction.
Her cheekbones wear high on her face and her chin is pointed; her lips are too red, too full, and her eyes are several shades too green. She is beautiful, but she is not Avarosa. Of course; how could she be?
The woman slips through the trees and walks straight to him. His disappointment fades into amazement; from the way she walks to the way she lifts her head, she resembles Avarosa in every way.
Perhaps this is his chance.
The woman stops before him, her eyes wide in wonder. The hawk quietly lifts itself to the nearest branch; Braum sees the achingly familiar crystal bow slung over the woman's shoulder.
"You are Braum," the woman says quietly. "From the legends."
He says nothing. She unslings her bow.
"Are you not Iceborn, granted immortality?" she says. "Why have you arrived only now?"
He stoops to one knee. "Are you Frost Archer?" he says quietly.
The woman grips her bow tightly. "Yes," she says.
She is the descendent of Avarosa. It is a chance; an unlikely chance, an unwieldy chance; but maybe, just maybe, he can protect her as he should have protected Avarosa.
He rises and salutes. "You have Braum's pledge," he says.
She seems baffled, but nods. "I thank you for your aid," she says. "Avarosa knows we can use it."
He smiles. "Yes, she does," he says softly.
She lifts a single brow. Just like Avarosa; unlike Avarosa. He only bows his head.
"May you have security," he says.
He raises his shield. The hawk flies overhead.
FIN